A drop entered my throat. It wasn't sweet. I felt it crawl, trying to reach the deepest part. The sensation went to my stomach, intestines, all the organs were invaded. The experience of having death as a weapon, the origin of everything I needed. In front of me, the abomination of a woman smiled. The holes in that infected pit showed something that wanted to escape her claws, but passing her tongue, she returned them to the world she had inside. I began to sweat. The risk was very high, but it worked. I have one foot inside. She promised to return. She left with an uneven gait, dragging a cart down the perpetually dirt road. No one knew what she carried. No one less than me.
I returned to the house. A piece of shit thrown up with sheet metal, effort, and my husband's stupid pride. A guy very happy with his meager achievements. I loved him; he was a little dog that did tricks and felt happy about it. I'll never be on his side in this! I've looked. No one would hire a cook without experience. The greasy spoon where he works is an infected nest of starving people. What he earns there was barely enough to build this on the glorious plot they gave me for my wedding. The worst is this belly. An abomination that moves, ready to come out, to eat up the resources for years to come. That's why I had to find a way out.
Getting her to approach was tedious. My mother had warned me about talking to her. No one did. Some left food on the ground just to see her fight with the dogs. But one day I confirmed my suspicions. On the ground there was a plate with noodles, some chicken, all rotten. In front of it, a little poodle barked desperately, trying to keep this old woman away from what would keep it alive for a couple of days. The old woman looked all around. I, hidden behind the ragged, transparent curtains of my window, managed to see how, after confirming that no one would do anything to her, she brought her hand close to the food. The dog seemed more terrified by the hand than by the fact of losing the food, but it was hungry. After warning her a couple of times, it attacked her. The bite the little dog left wasn't pretty. The first mark on her hand, and it looked like she was biting a piece of wax. Even the blood one would expect from an attack of that nature didn't seem to flow from the blackish wounds with frankly white skin. After a couple of attempts by the animal to bite her, it trusted itself enough to try to attack her higher up. At that moment, some gnarled fingers took it by the back of the neck, suspending its mangy body in the air. The animal still wanted to destroy her. What happened was that she put it in the cart, then piled up cans, returnable bottles, and many things that could be exchanged for a few coins, crushing all the contents. I only heard a few squeaks, nothing so loud that it would alert the neighbors. Then calm. I saw her walk away with her cart, dripping liquids I wasn't interested in knowing.
When people saw that the animal they fed was gone, they stopped putting out food. However, the plates of soup appeared again when, tied with a piece of raffia, the dog appeared. Behind him, his owner. Both ate from the plate. But I saw them. So much so that I could see the details. It was no longer alive. The first days, I even saw something escape from its rear. She stopped it with a kick and yelled at it not to leave food on the ground. It obeyed. It was an incredible power. Dangerous. Something I needed... I desperately needed it.
The idea of putting food out for her wouldn't work. First, because I don't have any. Second, because I saw what she did. Whatever she practices, she likes live things. So I began to give her clues. A little bird was the first. Its nest was in the lower part of the bush. I scratched my arm a bit to get it out of there. Then, with some revulsion, I used a pin to stick its wing to a twig. The cries for help were very loud. I was afraid someone would come to its rescue, but the afternoon passed, and its chirping decreased in intensity. So I took out another pin. I gave it water and then stabbed a leg. That's when she appeared. She almost saw me. She passed by as if she didn't understand the sacrifice. But when her skirt covered the nest, the chirping stopped. She took a few steps, then had a coughing fit, spitting something onto the ground. She looked in all directions and left. When I approached the spit stain, I saw it. The pin bathed in dark, thick blood. When I bent down, I saw it: a bill. Not the highest denomination, but at least it was two days' worth of groceries. It was there, under the bush. I'm sure it wasn't there before. When I picked it up, I felt a chill. But it didn't matter. Tomorrow I would eat meat even if it wasn't payday.
The next day, my husband went out to earn his miserable scraps. He wanted to buy something delicious for me, even if what I have in my belly also benefits. But when I took the bill, I felt chills again. I examined it, and on the back there was a brown fingerprint. I'm sure it belongs to that mysterious woman. So I didn't spend it. I went and bought the usual: spoiled vegetables, broken rice, and a little egg. With that, you make a paste that fills you up and doesn't malnourish you, while my stomach asked for something better. A guy knocked on the door. He brought a fat hen, the kind you only see in the best of times. The animal looked confident in his arms. Like many others who live in the area, he wanted food in exchange for work. He was looking to feed his animal, a friend of years, and something that would allow him to return the next day to keep asking. Seeing him like that, skinny and needy, hatred consumed me.
"Clean my patio and wash the dishes. I'll feed you."
The guy didn't even think about it. He gave me the afternoon for a bowl of the garbage I ate. So weak of mind and heart. No, this one isn't coming back whole. So I offered him the bill for his animal. He refused. It was his friend. I didn't say anything else. If I understood anything, it was about need. That animal isn't going to live long.
A couple of days passed. The lady didn't appear in the area. Only the guy, a peasant who believed in the fortune of the area stuck to the city. But there was nothing here. For no one. Less for someone who lives by the honest action of work, like my husband. After a while, no one even invited him for a taco. So he came to the house to do the housework. He even finished preparing the septic tank. A less dangerous method for those of us without drainage. Before, it was the patio ground, some shame, and a little lime. Now a hole remained in the center of the patio, disguised by some nameless weeds... The funny thing is that I'm the only one who used it, even unfinished. Seeing how he has to walk over everything I left the day before...! For a miserable plate! Integrity isn't something I appreciate.
We all have a breaking point. The poor man reached it after a couple of weeks. From then on, he began to accept everything without complaint. While I put him to work, I didn't stop searching for my future. To attract her, I used what had worked before, leaving offerings near the house. There were those who suspected unbridled youth, comparing idiot music with some animals with broken spines. In the mornings, I had something in return. There were bills, the kind I can't spend, each with very high denominations. A week's worth or several weeks in a single cat. The birds paid less. I tried a couple of times to convince one of those kids of their desire to leave, but it didn't work. If there's something valued here, it's the Church. They melted him back into it. He came out a few weeks later feet first. So much waste.
When the house had the provincial man's attention, my husband let him have a barnyard bird. A hen he was very proud of. He hoped it would soon lay eggs, and these, with a little luck, would improve their diet. The day after that bird settled in the back of the patio, a group of worms waited for me at the entrance of the house. I didn't scare them away. I wasn't an idiot. I moved them aside very carefully. Under them, a few words, like scratches on some leaves that those bugs ate and shit on:
"*Pain and sadness generate great power.*"
I didn't understand what it meant, but those bugs seemed poisonous. So I kept them in a little box with leaves. Every night I approached where the bird was and lit it with a log from the wood stove. When it began to wake, I put the worm in its beak. When I saw it didn't spit it out, I went back to bed. Days passed, and finally one morning a scream pulled me from my plans. When I got to the patio, I saw the peasant. That hick was on his knees in front of his hen. The terror of seeing that animal with green skin, all the plumage scattered throughout the patio, put the idea in my head for the first time that this was power. I even think I felt a little remorse. The animal hadn't done anything to me. The guy carried that animal without disgust, all the sores visible along the gaps the plumage had left. Despite what I thought, the animal wasn't dead. You could hear it breathing laboriously. I'm sure it was in its last seconds. The guy, crazy with sadness, wouldn't stop screaming about the risk of having poisoned that animal... Of course I denied it.
The man and that fortune brought more opportunities to humiliate him... so I screamed horrified:
"That animal is going to make us sick!"
He tried to argue, to insist that something like that wouldn't happen. But it wouldn't work. I wasn't going to let anyone take away my opportunity. I demanded that he had to throw it away. But I hit him with my shoe as soon as I saw him resigned to putting it in the compost basket. I screamed so loud that a little spit splattered his back.
"You want to poison my garden!"
My husband came out of the room where he was watching TV. Tense, he didn't know what was happening. But as soon as he saw the animal with its neck hanging, he took my side. So I complained. I demanded that the filthy man bleed the animal to avoid risks and throw it into the septic tank. I silenced any explanation he tried to give. My husband made a gesture to take out his machete... I never thought that rusty piece of trash would be useful for anything. Until now. I convinced my dear (today he earned a little passion) to return to the house. I took out a jar, the kind used for oil, and newspaper. In one, I placed the blood, and in the other, the viscera. I told him I would take this to the government, and he'd better hope it wasn't ranch stuff or I'd have him arrested. He obeyed. The animal's corpse plunged into the ever-deepening hole. This poor idiot would have to keep working there, accompanied by my first attempt at magic.
What I understood, little by little over the months, is that resentment, hate, fear, and guilt feed everything that witchcraft does. The enchantments are only to send the pain and misery of the sacrifices to those we want to do badly.
This person finally gave me something valuable once I gave him the viscera that seemed to interest her so much. I didn't know anything the first few days, but a week later a bundle of papers wrapped in twine appeared under my pillow. Obviously I didn't mention it to my husband or the idiot who was still trying to get over the death of his bird. They didn't need to know what I planned to dedicate myself to. The words weren't written in anything they taught me during school. Instead, there were traces of a brittle dark brown... I didn't understand anything. I didn't know what she expected me to do because at the end of the day, she wasn't teaching me anything. Desperate, I touched the first group of scratches, and it crumbled, staying on one finger. I went to wash it off, but nothing came off. I worried that she might be betraying me and that she was probably going to do something behind my back or to my person. I scrubbed with every instrument I could think of, including the scrubber I used for pots. The metal tore my skin without doing anything to the brown stain. But as soon as my blood wet it, it began to disappear as if returning to the bloodstream from which it came. And the voice inside my head told me that was what I had to do.
"Price of curses and hexes"
A weird title for a crazy old lady who lived on the street. But it was clear that no matter how desperate I was, I wasn't going to smear her blood on my wounds all the time. So I devised a plan. A few weeks later, just when they were going to place the structure that would turn the disgusting pit into a minimally decent bathroom for our family, annoyed, I told him that contaminated hen had damaged the bottom of the pit and that we weren't going to sit there so those bad humors could attack us while we did something so private. So he would have to plant some bushes around it, because if he hadn't heard about the Spanish flu, that's how we were going to save ourselves from death. Of course, I also told him he had to build another well to replace the one he had ruined with his disgusting animal.
While the second structure was being built, I demanded that we had to recover the cost of the first hole. So once he finished helping me and making progress on the new digging, he had to go out looking for dead animals and bring them to throw into the pit. I told him that way nothing would be wasted. Once he fell asleep dead from exhaustion, I used a stick to pull one out and left it near the house as payment for my teacher. Fortunately, she was grateful, so bills of many denominations and even a little thing made of straw came into my hands before I understood how it happened.
---
Life went on, although in a rather irritating way.
The people in the area, like before, began to approach me more and more and ask for help. And I, little by little, managed to decipher that damned book.
The saddest part of this period was that I ended up expecting a child. Nothing bothers me more than losing the little freedom I had. But what can we do at the end of the day? He's my partner, and even though he's stupid, he hasn't let us go hungry, according to him. And I ended up giving in.
On the plus side, during this time I managed to finish the structure. That rather gruesome structure that today is located right behind what is now our septic tank. How I wish there was drainage in this region. We're still in an area abandoned by the hand, well, not of God, but of the rulers, whoever, I don't care.
Now the poor bricklayer, the poor country guy who calls himself faithful, noble, and so on, I managed to infect him. It's not his fault. He was already lost. I saw him very sad since his damn hen died. If only he knew all the things that hen helped me with. From the viscera, the roe, to the skin and meat, which evidently was used, taking advantage of every last drop. For him, it was harder.
Once he finished the work, I allowed him to live here in exchange for doing the cleaning. Little by little, I've been poisoning him. Sometimes it's just something in the food, sometimes a little something in the drink. The thing is, he doesn't have to realize how his body is beginning to rot inside. Truth be told, I still want my teacher to really teach me and not force me to read a book that sometimes has one letter, sometimes another, and occasionally they even try to eat each other.
But well, as I said, it's finished. Just when the cry of my firstborn was heard, this man died. It was the finishing touch to create this well. It's my wishing well.
In the structure, when he was already very sick, very weak, I offered him food and a bottle of mezcal with a worm. Obviously he didn't understand that worm had been worked on for a long time. I had fed it with blood, with remains, and the mezcal was some crap I had stolen from my husband. It doesn't matter. With one hand I held my boy, my adoration, and with the other I told him to come.
The guy couldn't even form complete sentences anymore. I think he stood at traffic lights begging or something, I don't care. Anyway, he devoured his last supper. He drank the worm. I could clearly see how the little life he had left began to fade. Since I didn't want to deal with a corpse and the stench, I threw him, I tossed him right into that well.
When he fell in there, I could slowly feel the force begin to surround me. That well is my source. My wishing well. You have to be realistic. I don't like being near it for too long either. All those who already inhabit it try to escape, and I'm sure that soon I'll see that peasant stuck in there, with his desires to continue, to fight, and to be in the big city. Poor naive guy. Anyway, it's a gain for me.
Six more months passed like this, and I have to do something. My teacher has started asking me for payment that I don't want to give her. She left me a note saying that my son's life had to be short if I wanted to continue receiving teachings from her. To be honest with you, I don't have the slightest intention of doing it. I told her I could have other children, that I could bring her new things. I even once, by trickery, drugged a neighbor's kid, one of those hateful ones, and threw him there, at her feet, and told her: "Help yourself. You don't have to mess with my family." She just looked at me and turned away.
I know she's getting weaker and weaker. Now that I have a source of power, now that I have this backing me up, I can see her. She's a monster. Everything that surrounds her, what she's made of. But she's consuming herself. I really don't understand how she can't take advantage of all the benefits and the power that new life gives us, like I do.
Since she rejected the little one, and I didn't want it to be too obvious that I was the one who had brought her down like that, I made sure to turn to her family and thus gain favors with the butcher and so many others. The flow of money didn't stop, but I no longer needed my teacher for it. I just had to help and make sure that within each help I delivered some kind of method to ensure that if they wanted to spend that money to harm me, it would backfire on them, and if they wanted to spend it on what it wasn't for, it would harm them and not last. They weren't very difficult spells. I could stay awake at night while I heard the crying, because boy, a lot of people tried to fool me, but I wasn't going to allow that.
And that's how I managed to get through another two years until that night.
My husband had left because it was the celebration of, I don't know, some crap from the company. Truth be told, I didn't want to go there anymore. The fact that he got a job in some kind of delivery company is beneficial for me. He's not home all day, and I'm free to do what I need to do. So I had fed my son dinner. I was waiting for my daughter. The truth is, knowing it was going to be a daughter wasn't particularly interesting. But I needed her. Now I was an important woman in the area. Now I could afford to talk as if I were someone with money, with status. And my daughter, I'm going to raise her so she never rebels. She's going to accompany me until my last days because I'm not stupid. My husband has had to pay a price for staying by my side. There was already an event where he almost died. I had to operate on him here. I took out a piece of his intestine. I glued it with other things. Don't worry.
---
It's not that I don't love him, that I'm not interested, and that he's a burden. And it's another thing entirely that I'm going to let him fall. He's mine, and he's going to accompany me for the rest of his life.
However, right now he's not here, just when I don't want him to be, because the wind has begun. Things are about to get very dangerous. I knew this day would come. It wasn't possible to avoid my teacher for long. She wanted my son. She wanted my firstborn. How dare she think of it? So I'm going to make sure she gets neither the firstborn nor anyone else. She's not going to have anything of mine. I've fed her faithfully. I've seen how she's becoming more and more a shadow of how powerful she could have been, or is, or will be. So no, I don't plan to give her anything. But she can give me something in the end. That something is something I need, because I know my power isn't enough. Even though it hurts a little to admit it, it seems I'm not that skilled. But that ends today.
The closed night tells me the time is coming. The scratches on the doors, the windows, those windows that cost me so much, with money, with favors... This woman doesn't understand. I'm not practicing witchcraft because I'm the most powerful witch. I want and need everything that witchcraft can give me. I don't care which God she serves or which demon. What I want, I'm going to have, and I'm going to keep it.
This damn belly won't let me advance too much, but it doesn't matter. I'm not unarmed. I've spent years preparing everything I can, and I say years because I don't care what anyone thinks. Time can sound very short when you're tormenting, when you're preparing poisons. But I'm sure it's not a matter of months. My little one already walks, and my daughter... well, my staff is in her last weeks before birth. I've already made sure to bind her to me. She's going to have a stupid, simple name. So no one loves her, no one looks for her. I'm even going to make sure she's not attractive. All so that she stays by my side, so she looks after me. And well, even for this old man who is my husband.
But the sounds continue. It's clear she's having a hard time getting through my defenses. Obviously, back then I wasn't going to allow the children who disappeared to link me to anything, but the souls of infants are powerful. Who would have thought? And now I see her. I see her. I can see her even before my eyes perceive her. She's a withered stain. She's a dull lump. Nothing like the strength I have, all the vitality. So I'm not going to do ceremonies for her. I'll just let her in, and as soon as she passes, I'll be waiting for her. A couple of bindings, curses. I won't give her time for anything. She doesn't deserve pity or compassion. She's been a monster her whole life. I'm just beginning.
Even so, the fight is hard. I'm sure I'll have consequences, but I can pass them on to my husband. It doesn't matter. He's still strong. He can still take it. I still can't understand it. Why does she insist so much on wanting my son? Because she wants power. She wants prosperity. She's a bag of bones who wants what she no longer has, what she hasn't lived. But she'll never have my son.
Anyway, it's been a very difficult battle. The frights, the shadows, the moving energies make me hear him cry. I can't allow him to wake up. He doesn't need to see anything I do. I've worked hard so that everyone around me does what I say and what I want, so that on top of that, I give him a reason, give him tools to doubt me.
So if he lets his guard down, I'll throw him... she fell fast. Squeeze her, catch her. She's the one who caused you to suffer. She's the one who made you so miserable. Not me. I was taught. I just wanted something better than the garbage I lived in. And now realize, she's responsible for all the evil you've lived through. Yes, yes, eat her up. And you, don't laugh. Don't laugh because I don't care what you want to tell me. If I'm not going to go further in magic, I'm going to be happy. I'm going to be fulfilled. No one will be able to face me because you are right inside what will be for me the best wishing well of all to serve me.